Aston Bennett

Name: Aston Bennett

Gender: Female

Age: 17

Grade: 12th

School: Bayview Secondary School

Hobbies and Interests: Basketball, cross country, and biking. She also enjoys reading books (when she has time) and volunteers at the animal shelter.

Appearance: Aston is 6'0" and weighs 167 pounds. She has dark brown hair, cut short and gelled into spikes. She has a wide forehead with thin eyebrows and hooded eyes fringed with dark lashes. Her eyes are dark brown, almost black. Her face is pitted with acne scars from severe breakouts in her younger teens. Her nose is crooked from an injury that didn’t heal properly and she has a square jaw and thin lips.

Aston is tall and muscular, with tanned skin from all the activities she does during the summer. She prefers to wear guys’ clothing because it is more comfortable in her opinion. Because of this, she gets mistaken for a guy by people who don’t know her, but she isn’t bothered by it.

Biography: Aston was born January 24th at 9:27 A.M. to Maxwell and Alyssa Bennett. The middle child of the family, between older brother Kyle and younger brother Wallace, Aston has always competed for her parents’ affection. Aston was forced to go to Kyle’s football and basketball games, which gave her the answer to winning her parents’ affections. She felt that if she acted more like her brothers, her parents would pay more attention to her. She started playing basketball and running track with local leagues in elementary school, and continued playing basketball into her middle and high school years, trading track for cross country her freshman year. She started road biking during the summer her seventh grade year and has raced competitively for over a year. Aston has two border collies, Lars and Rex, adopted from the shelter she volunteers at. She loves them and takes them with her when she runs or bikes.

Despite all of her activities, Aston makes good grades and keeps at least a B+ in all of her subjects. English and math both appeal to her, while the arts bore her to tears because she has no real artistic talent, acting, or singing ability.

Aston enjoys reading books about history, sports, or any combination of the two. She also reads biking and running magazines, which she piles under her bed in neat stacks for future reference. She has a tendency to start multiple books and set some of them aside until much later, when she picks them back up and finally finishes them.

Aston keeps to herself most of the time, not because she’s shy, but because she’s narcissistic. When she discovered her athletic abilities, she took pride in her accomplishments. The more she won and proved she was better than her competition, the more she began to believe in her own infallibility, which evolved into the narcissism Aston suffers from today. It’s to the point now that even if someone does beat her, she’s convinced that she’s still better than them in some way, shape, or form.

She will cooperate with people when necessary (sports teams don’t bother her), but she doesn’t particularly like relying on people in other situations. She is extremely competitive and loves to crush people when it comes to contests, especially her siblings. Most of the few friends she has are guys, because she isn’t girly and doesn’t like the drama that comes with hanging around lots of girls. The girls she does hang around are usually from the teams she competes with. When she does talk, she’s sharp, sarcastic, and comes off as callous or uncaring. She is very negative and cynical. Her personality and looks are enough to drive any guy seeking a romantic relationship to head for the hills, which is exactly what she wants. Aston has no attraction to either sex, though she does have kind of a soft spot for her friends.

Aston is most likely to give her trust to people with the same interests as her. Sports and games are the only place she believes she can forge meaningful relationships. Her nature drives her to seek out other people as competitive as she is. So basically her friends are her rivals. She only trusts people like her because she likes to think she is the model of all that is good and upstanding in humanity, therefore people like her are worthy of her trust. She will occasionally make exceptions for people who seem to mean her no harm and make no attempts to change her or point out her flaws (because she is perfect, after all).

Her loyalty only comes after someone has proved themselves. This means that if someone gains her trust and holds this trust for a long amount of time (meaning they don’t do anything to upset her or go against her), and they have the traits she sees as advantageous (personality traits like hers) they earn her loyalty. Since she believes she can make no mistakes that might put her at a disadvantage, this loyalty can never be revoked once given. Aston will stand behind and protect the people she is loyal to no matter what, and she expects the same from those she is loyal to. Because there’s no point in being loyal to a person who can’t give her some sort of advantage.

Advantages: Aston is athletic, with amazing stamina and endurance. She is also intelligent and if her trust is earned, she’s the most loyal friend anyone could ask for.

Disadvantages: Aston is not quick to trust anyone and isn’t very friendly, making her loyalty hard to earn. She gets angry in situations that spiral too far out of her control and will not let go of grudges if offended. Her loyalty is also her fault, because she thinks if someone is worthy of her loyalty they are worthy of it forever, making her easy to betray if someone gets into her inner circle.

Designated Number: Female student no. 113

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Designated Weapon: Bersa Thunder 380 (.380 ACP) [x4 magazines (10 round capacity)]

Conclusion: This one has promise. I just don't see how she can go any way but crazy, and with a gun, she just might pull it off. I think we've got a contender here, and a serious one at that. I'll be watching Ms. Bennett closely.

'The above biography is as written by infinityhype. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Infinityhype, Inky, Ciel

Kills: Quincy Jones, Saul Fetteralf

Killed By: Aaron Hughes

Collected Weapons: Bersa Thunder 380 (assigned weapon, to Joe Rios), Crowbar (taken from Michelle O'Cain, to Anna Chase), Uzi (from Warehouses, found in the container opened by Sarah Atwell's key)

Allies: Marty Lovett, Michelle O'Cain, Anna Chase, Joshua Krakowski, Alice Boucher, Joe Rios

Enemies: Michelle O'Cain, Quincy Jones, Tiffany Chanders, Kris Hartmann

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:

Other/Trivia

 * Aston was given to Inky after her original handler went inactive.

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Aston, in chronological order.

The Past:

No threads

Pre-Game:
 * Irritating Thoughts
 * A Whole Lot of Nothing

V4:


 * There is a Light (handler swapover from infinityhype to Inky)
 * Life's a Beach
 * Wind in the Willow
 * And As If It Couldn't Get Any Worse
 * Amazing Journey/Sparks
 * Later, Buddy
 * Feral Intelligence
 * No Such Thing as a Perfect Plan
 * Cracking
 * So Give Me Something to Believe
 * Vitriol
 * Never To Be Found
 * Out of Sight, Out of Mind
 * The Golden Treehouse
 * Dead-End Scenario
 * Finalizing Plans
 * The Mighty Sparrow

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Aston Bennett. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''


 * I wasn't sure why on earth I adopted Aston, but she quickly became my most favourite character to write with. She was everything I wanted in a character to write about when I got into her, she turned out exactly the way I wanted to (except for one little thing), and she got handed over to my favourite writer once I bombed out. I wouldn't change a thing. - Inky
 * Aston was an interesting character. Her initial concept was really basic, but she got handed off early on and Inky put in a lot of effort to move her past that. From tehre out, Aston is, for me, a real mixed bag. That's largely down to the fact that both Inky and Ciel used her to play around with different styles and ideas, trying on plot elements and writing styles and then discarding them or morphing them into something else. This makes for a rather disjointed reading experience, as things come in and go out seemingly at random.

In a way, this is good, because it means that Aston is never tied to a sinking ship. She loses the annoying formatting thing fairly quickly, which is a huge relief because it makes her way easier and more pleasant to read. On the other hand, sometimes things that really need a payoff don't get it. Aston keeps a journal for a few threads, but it just gets forgotten later, which leaves it with nothing to really narratively justify its existence in the first place, especially since it doesn't do much for Aston's character or story.

Then there are a few awkward plot points. Aston's desire for revenge makes pretty good sense given her story and character, but I really don't buy her turning away from the rescue. It just doesn't make sense, especially since the rescuers make it known that they wouldn't even take Quincy, leaving little chance he'd survive even without Aston around. There was this issue with quite a few characters, who were thrown near the rescue not because it fit their stories, but because it added some theoretical suspense and drama, obfuscating who their handler was actually going to save (since only one character per handler could be rescued). It wasn't particularly effective at the time, and in retrospect it just adds weird bumps into the stories of otherwise-solid characters.

Aston does catch up with Quincy shortly after avoiding the rescue, and manages to lose most of her moral high ground in the confrontation. This never goes quite as far as I'd like, though. She moved to Ciel after that, and the transition was pretty rocky at first, largely due to some more experimentation with breaking Aston's narrative up into really short lines. Once that got dropped, though, I feel like Ciel really did nail Aston. Her last few bits are my favorite, because her arrogance and competence come together really nicely, giving her a lot to do and keeping her in that grey area where you're sort of rooting for her but feel bad for doing so.

On the whole, Aston's a mixed bag and not a super consistent read, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to be found in her story. - MurderWeasel